Believe me, please, when I say that I do not scare easily. It takes a lot to rattle this old man, a guy who’s been shelled by enemy troops, flown over an erupting volcano and been catapulted off the deck of a nuclear-powered U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.
Thus, when I say something gives me the willies, know that it’s for real. I can think of nothing more frightening to our cherished American system of representative democracy than to see Donald J. Trump return to within spitting distance of the White House.
I want to add an important caveat to this notion, which is that I remain highly dubious that the former POTUS is going to run for the office in 2024. I will not swallow the swill being offered by pundits who contend that at this moment he is frontrunner for the Republican Party presidential nomination.
I also want to point out that Trump’s fundamental message is the same as it was when Joe Biden thumped his ass in the 2020 election: the election was stolen. Dammit to hell! It wasn’t! President Biden was elected fairly, squarely and legally. The boring message that Trump keeps delivering is beginning to fall on an increasing number of GOP deaf ears.
For the United States to return to the days of pathological lying, of incompetence at every level of the executive branch of government, of a president who is scorned and ridiculed by our nation’s allies and seeks to cozy up to a bully who has been committing crimes against humanity in his illegal Ukraine War signals a collective depravity I didn’t think could exist in this great nation.
We’re going to have our midterm election soon. Then we’ll start digesting news about the GOP field that will take shape for the next presidential contest. As the Almighty is my witness, I cannot fathom how our great nation could allow itself to be sucked into the abyss that awaits were it to bring back the Trump Era.